Rian Johnson is set to take the reins of the “Star Wars” franchise. The “Looper” filmmaker will write and direct “Star Wars: Episode VIII” and pen a treatment for “Episode IX,” a representative for Johnson confirmed to Hero Complex.

Johnson takes over for J.J. Abrams, who is currently helming “Episode VII” from a script he wrote with Lawrence Kasdan.

A representative for Disney, which owns Lucasfilm, declined to comment on the news of Johnson’s hiring.

Johnson’s previous films include the high-school noir “Brick” and the caper comedy “The Brothers Bloom,” and he’s best known for the mind-bending time-travel thriller “Looper,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. The 2012 movie grossed $176 million at the worldwide box office.

Director Rian Johnson (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

Johnson, 40, is the latest genre-savvy young filmmaker to join the “Star Wars” universe: “Godzilla” director Gareth Edwards and “Chronicle” director Josh Trank have also been enlisted to direct two “Star Wars” standalone movies.

Good choice. JJ Abrahams feels like a Spielberg-Lucas copycat with few cinematic creative visions of his own. Rian has a fresh credit to propel this adventure into new dimensions, larger than Abrahams who basically is relaying on his masters who where hot shots 20 years ago. Sorry followers to both Spielberg and Lucas, but If this adventure is going to survive and deliver today it needs fresh talent from the digital age and much more demanding storytelling than ever before. From a European perspective it feels like that is hard to accomplish at all, looking at the predictable way movies are made in Hollywood today. What´s in the frames is what matters, more than ever, and it seems like Hollywood can´t deliver like ten years ago. Film-students be aware. Europe is not impressed at all by mainstream Hollywood standards today. You must be a lot more inventive in storytelling, even if you have all CG graphics computer power in the world.

Funnily enough, as a European myself, I think JJ Abrams has done good work, a bit to friendly with the lighteffects maybe, but good at keeping a fast paced story kicking and enjoyable…

I also liked Looper a lot, there was some holes in it but nothing worse then the rest of the movies do…

As per usual though, I prefer to wait and judge AFTER the fact, I will assume that I will enjout all the Star Wars movies, as I had the ones before this, I may not fancy all the things hapening in them, but on a whole I enjoyed them a lot, and even rewatch now and again… I think the miovies will become quite enjoyable, as to rewatchable, that remains to be seen :D